As you might have heard, the Planning Commission will receive some kind of update on the Fairview Development Center planning process to end its meeting tonight. Yes, there is also another cannabis shop on its agenda — one that will be evaluated, in theory, according to the old cannabis rules, not the ones recently passed by the City Council — but that seems like just the opening act.

And that’s because the City’s social media and email marketing folks have been overdrive to make sure anyone and everyone is aware that this FDC update is coming. I’ve seen posts on both Instagram and Facebook as well as multiple emails reminding me that “all members of the community are welcome to attend the meeting” (aren’t they always?) to get this update. It’s definitely a much more aggressive public awareness campaign than your typical run-of-the-mill Planning Commission meeting gets. So what’s up?

Honestly, other than spending the State’s money on the consultant, I’m not sure. It will be interesting to see how PlaceWorks reacts given that this will be its first presentation to a city body since the City Council unceremoniously threw it off its list of on-call consultants, ostensibly in a show of no-confidence relating to its handling of the FDC outreach meetings.

There is mention of a “market study” in the Agenda Report that’s been done that could be interesting, especially since that hasn’t been made public. The statement that the area will generate demand for “29,500 to 55,900 square feet of retail space is somewhat interesting, given that even a moderately sized grocery store (like the Sprouts on E. 17th Street, for example) is about 27,000 square feet. So two grocery stores is all we’re envisioning for the entire FDC site? I’m not sure an “urban village” does such a number make.

But perhaps the headline in the agenda report is the new expected timeline. Apparently Staff and the consultant are putting together three “land use scenarios” for the public and the Planning Commission/City Council to review, and ultimately the City Council will need to pick one. The scenarios should be ready for the public to review in May/June of this year, and, following several more months of feedback and circulation to the PC and the City Council, the Staff will begin work on the general plan update itself. This will come with an environmental impact report (yaaaaaaay) so the Staff expects that whole process to take up to 8 months. So counting on my fingers and toes, it looks like we should be expecting a actual plan in hand by… early next year? Maybe?

So maybe we’re all supposed to tune in to learn that we’ve been invited to tune out. I guess we’ll find out tonight.